Bravery
by eolas eadrom
Summary: A story of the one person who might have become a hero if he weren't such a coward. Not a happy ending.


You have been raised as a Lord all your life.

You have known only wealth, only richness and perfection all your life. You have been served by lesser creatures, and you know that those Muggles are nothing.

But when you are asked how you know, you can't answer.

Your parents protect you, but you spend your whole life trying to make them proud of you. By the time you realize how wrong they are, how wrong you are, it's too late. Too late.

You are only fifteen when your whole life shatters around you. Your father is in Azkaban, and you are proud, you are ecstatic to take his mark. You never knew what a mistake it was until you couldn't back out.

You are given a task, a task that you know in your heart of hearts you will never complete. Your former friends, your former life seems such a distant dream, a dream you want so much but can never achieve.

They have turned their backs on you now that you are not the Prince. You don't know how you can trust any of them. How you ever could.

Your whole life seems to be thrumming to one beat, to two words. Too late. Every day you can feel his anger rise, and you worry. You worry for your mother, your father.

For yourself.

You scream at Potter and his gangs of friends, but inside you're screaming that he can have people who stand by him.

Potter is never alone. You are.

You are getting more desperate. Your mother needs you to do this, but you know that you cannot. You are asked to kill.

You do not hate the man who is his greatest enemy.

You began this truly believing in Mudbloods. But you've seen their blood. It is as red as your own.

That night you went to your room and felt your life whirl around you, everything they've ever told you, everything, shift. You felt the truth as sharp and as harsh as a dagger.

That was the first time you cried since you went to Hogwarts.

It wasn't the last.

You begin to play a dangerous game. A game that you know no one else can. You edge the line between sanity and craziness, but what had once seemed a gaping chasm is now only a crack.

You have been a Slytherin all your life. You know Occlumency and you can bear physical pain. You stand alone, the Slytherin Prince, and smile from the shadows as you see Potter and his gang act like they can beat the Dark Lord on their own.

What fools.

And then you think.

Potter defeated him for so long. But it wasn't by himself. How many others, you wonder, have helped him along from the back? How many others have played the innocent to their own tune to defeat a man who they couldn't on their own?

* * *

You are seventeen when you do it. It is a surprise. You never expected to have the cold heartedness to.

But you do. And the man drops, dead before he hits the ground.

And you wonder. You have spent years telling yourself to do what is needed, necessary. In the name of the Light, have you turned Darker than you ever meant to?

You do not know. And you do not ever want to.

And you pray day and night that this war will end soon. That this war will claim you, because there is nothing you want more than oblivion.

But you know it will never come.

You have come to hate two men, two men who push and pull you like the moon and the tides. Two men, one who hates everyone and you must watch every word you say to him.

The other you must watch everything for you do not know when he is true and when he is manipulating you.

You hate them both. You hate them more than anything.

You stand alone, darkness surrounding you, and no one dares to come close enough to melt your icy exterior.

You are barely twenty when he falls.

You know now that there is nothing left for you to survive in this world. No one notices you take the small plant from Snape's cupboard.

You have been planning this for far too long, is the only thing you can think at the moment.

And you mix it in water, raise the cup to your lips, and look up, up, up, at the cold sky, the same sky your mother, your father, everyone looks up at before they too, die.

No tears fall down. You will be strong in this one thing, you swear to yourself. You will be a Gryffindor at the end.

The irony isn't lost on you.

And you take the drink, close your eyes, feel the sweet bitterness that coats your throat, that will kill you.

You embrace, embrace the hollowness it promises, and feel, as if from far away, your feet fall, the soft tinkle of sharp glass, the jagged pieces pressed against your cheek.

Then you feel the small thread holding you to the Earth snap.

And you fly, fly away from everything that you never imagined having to do.

That you did nonetheless.

But in your ears rings one person's words. It is your enemy's, the very same one who you saved countless times.

"Thank you, Draco. I am so very sorry."


End file.
